Day in the Life: Take Two

27 March 2015

Blogger previously ate this post, but since the text was still displaying in Shaina's feedly, she was kind enough to send me the text of my own post so I could re-post it without having to start from scratch. THANK YOU!

This particular day was Wednesday: A weekday with no out-of-the-house meetings, in the middle of a week when my husband was traveling for work, so I had a pretty quiet, to-myself kind of routine going:7:32AM: Wake Up to the Lovely Sounds of Construction Noise Outside -- I'm guessing that I've got a later start time than most other bloggers, so I'm not complaining. But because we moved into a partially-finished new construction neighborhood, I got to wake up to the sound of cement being drilled this particular morning, and enjoyed the dull racket of hammers pounding and the beeping of trucks backing up until the crew quit around 4:30.

8:30AM: Coffee's On, Dog's Been Out -- I walk our dog, Indy, every morning at least as far as the end of the block and back. Today's walk was short, because it's gray and rainy, which means the dog will be more wound up than usual, but... c'est la vie.

I did the dishes from my dinner the night before and read a few pages of Inside the O'Briens while the coffee brewed (Snickerdoodle flavored coffee from Wegman's, y'all... get on that), then had coconut-chia pudding and strawberries for breakfast. I'm trying to cut back on dairy and gluten, so this is my recent replacement for my more typical bowl of cereal and/or yogurt + granola.

After breakfast, I showered and got dressed for the day (every day, even though I work from home), and made the bed. It makes me feel like the day is officially started.

9:07AM: Upstairs to work -- I work out of a home office in the loft of my house. It's still a work in progress, as we just moved in in January, but it's starting to feel like my space. I'm going to speed through the work hours here because explaining what I do in nuanced detail is a) not really possible and b) not all that interesting...

My home office, complete with both four-legged companions, and stacks of books to flatten out that last edge curl in the polka-dot rug.

I am a Program Officer for a small non-profit foundation, which basically means I oversee our grants process. Because we only have two employees, I also manage our website and social media accounts (the latter intermittently) and generally do whatever else needs doing on a given day. This Wednesday, that meant:

9:30-12:52: Grant Application Review -- Because our Spring grant cycle is in full force, I've got new grant applications trickling in on a daily basis. These range from 24 pages to 156 pages, depending on attachments, and I'm the first reviewer. I spent my morning taking a first read through many recent applications, which is something I actually really enjoy doing. (I started on this at 9:30 instead of 9:07 when I came upstairs because I got distracted checking email, Twitter, etc. before diving in for the day.)

My multi-tasking desk.

12:52: Lunch -- I got a late start to lunch after falling into the "I'll just finish one more thing" trap, so by the time I ate, I was cranky and annoyed and generally bothered by the inefficiencies of the FedEx Office upload process. So lunch consisted of a hastily thrown together, unattractive and unphotographed wrap and a cup of much-needed tea, all delayed by my knocking the (uncapped) mayonnaise off of the counter and watching it splatter all over the floor, the rug, and the refrigerator. Right into the refrigerator's water filter, no less...

So I treated myself to a few pages of Under the Bus while I ate. Under a blanket, because it is damn cold in this house.

Po decided to be part of the Day in the Life documentation.

1:45-6:17: Work, Again -- Same old, same old. Email, some social media updates, more grant reviews, some tweaks to our website and online portal, more email, more email, more email.

6:17: I should really go downstairs but now I get sucked into the interwebs -- I'm still working on establishing boundaries for my work-from-home hours. Around the end of a "normal" workday, I generally shift back over to blog work--writing a post, catching up on my Feedly reader, etc. This day, I intended to do some more Bloggiesta work and then spent 20 minutes on Twitter and Facebook doing... nothing, really. I did type up some notes for this post, spin through my Feedly reader, and read/respond to some personal emails, but I also responded to a few more work emails that trickled in, uploaded two more files to FedEx to print, and read another article I had flagged on a philanthropy blog.

So now it's....

6:50: And I should really get something started for dinner -- Because my husband was out of town for most of this week, I didn't really feel all that motivated to make dinner. I contemplated going out (I really love eating out alone) but went the more budget-friendly path of leftovers, especially as I knew I had restaurant plans for the next night with my mom. Chicken thighs and rice and broccoli; balanced but entirely unexciting. I ate on the couch while listening to an audiobook. This is the life.

Dining in style.

7:47: Pup time -- After feeding the dog, we did some in-house work on the leash: heel, don't be afraid of the vacuum cleaner, ignore the treats on the floor while we're walking, let me go up the stairs first. I should really do some trick training with him to wear him out, since I cut our walks so short due to the weather, but I'm tired and I don't really feel like it and so I feed him and we head for the couch.

8:15orso: Couch time -- This is my favorite part of the day. When my husband's home, we'll often end up catching up on television series (currently: Parks & Rec, Downton, and The Blacklist), but I'm taking advantage of the quiet to catch up on galleys--which is also one of my Bloggiesta goals. I've been reading entirely too many books last-minute, pushing up on deadlines, so my selections right now are all an attempt to get/stay ahead on that. After a bit of Under the Bus, I opted for the much more emotional Inside the O'Briens for the rest of the evening, until I finished it and found my eyelids drooping.

10:35: Bed -- After letting the dog out (again), checking the doors were locked (again), and turning out the lights, I'm off to bed.

Truth.

This day looked nothing like the day before, where I had a meeting in Baltimore to visit an applicant and happy hour with some of the women from my book club; and nothing like the day after, which included lots of FedEx office runs for printed materials, a stop at the bank, and dinner with my mom. That's what I love about Trish's event: the chance not only to reflect on how different each of my days is from the others, despite sometimes feeling like a routine, but on how different our days are from each other's.